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CYBERVILLE: CLICKS, CULTURE, AND THE CREATION OF AN ONLINE TOWN_|_BY STACY HORN_|_WARNER BOOKS_|_340 PAGES
BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS | Stacy Horn doesn't want to wire the world. She doesn't subscribe to a philosophy of Bigger is Better. She is uneasy with words like "content" and "market penetration." She's also one of the most influential individuals in cyberspace. What Stacy Horn is, by her own definition, is the mayor of a small town. The town is Echo, the Manhattan online service she founded in 1989. Stacy was one of my first Internet heroes. I got on Echo almost as soon as I got online, because it was a ballsy, East Coast yang to the Well's breezy California yin. Horn's community was meaner and more insular than your usual, mall-friendly Net communities, and it appealed to the in-your-face Hoboken native in me. Elsewhere online, it's easy to become lost in the crowd -- America Online, for example, has 10 million subscribers, a population roughly as big as Belgium's. Echo, meanwhile, holds steady at about 3,500 members. Its carefully cultivated little-guy stature has given Echo something sorely lacking in jumbo-sized communities: a personality. The Echoids, as the members call themselves, speak in a patois that's half New York and half the private shorthand that only develops among people who talk to each other every day. It takes a while to get used to -- but it's sharper and infinitely more satisfying than chat room come-ons or Usenet dissections of what "sux" and what "rools." The evolution of this single quirky corner of the Net is chronicled in Horn's new book, "Cyberville," which is not a history per se, and isn't, thank God, a philosophical text prophesying how technology is going to change your drab and meaningless life. Rather, it's a collection of stories -- reminiscences of arguments, affairs and forays into the land of self-loathing (via excerpts from a discussion thread pithily titled "I Hate Myself"). The book's (and Echo's) attitude is perhaps best conveyed in a chapter called "A Christmas Moment," in which a holiday dialogue between a handful of members climaxes with a poem titled "Bring Us Some Goddamn Fucking Figgy Pudding." It was intimate, funny, smart spaces like Echo and the Well that served as our inspiration when we created Table Talk, Salon's own online community. From the beginning, we wanted TT to develop its own accent, an ambience as uniquely global as Echo and the Well were local. But the ideal of a place in which you know your neighbors -- a place that just happens to exist in cyberspace -- wouldn't have been possible without pioneers like Horn. What did you mean by "Cyberville"? It's finally grown on me, but it wasn't my original choice. I wanted to call the book "There's No Place Like Home: Life in a Small Town in Cyberspace." [In "Cyberville," Horn also asserts she almost called the book "We Will Never Learn and I Have Proof."] I didn't want a techno title. But "Cyberville" conveys a lot in one word. It represents a small town. And was that what you were looking for when you got online -- something you describe in the book as "sustained, ongoing connection to the same group of people ... a place that will always be there?" In the late '80s, the Net meant Usenet. The Well wasn't even on the Net, in a sense. You couldn't telnet to it; you had to literally call it up. So there was Usenet, which felt like the whole world, and there was the Well. And I wanted a place like the Well. The thing that surprises me is that there aren't more of these small, locally based spaces out there, where you can hang out and post and get to know people. I was heartsick when I moved to New England and there was no Well or Echo equivalent. I thought, "How am I going to meet people?" I'm surprised there aren't more of these places, too. The only reason I can think is that it's not a simple matter to start one up. It's not just a business -- it's like founding a town. And that's a tricky and subtle process. The kind of people who are trying to get into virtual communities, they don't appreciate nuance. They think in terms of these little facts and numbers. But it's about personalities and about chemistry between the personalities. When we started, it was a matter of watching extremely carefully and tinkering when I saw something working and tinkering when I saw something not working. You have to think a little more, and it's a subtle and long-term process. That's a huge part of it -- it takes a long time, and not everyone has the patience. I remember when we started Salon, the magazine took off right away, and it was hard because I knew it wouldn't be like that with Table Talk. You can't just throw people into the same room and expect them to instantly connect. It took months and months just for people to get to know each other. Whenever you're starting something new, it's going to be awkward and uncomfortable. It's like the first few times you make love. That's why I was so sad about Electric Minds [Howard Rheingold's short-lived Web community] -- people didn't give it enough time. It's been more than two years since Table Talk started, and I feel like we're just hitting our stride. How long was it before you felt Echo had really come together? Pretty much the same, about two years. It was after we'd been through the first few crises. I used to feel, when something would happen to create an uproar, that I had to do my best to neutralize it as soon as possible. Then I saw that if you get through these things, it brings people together. I think you do have to be more attentive at first, though, when everyone is still strangers. People are still looking at you for answers more than they're looking at each other. Over time, everybody gets adept at weathering the storms, and you can step in less and less. But you don't necessarily have to fix things. If something has to be worked out, you just have to work it out. It's like with your friends -- after you've gone through a big fight and survived, the friendship is stronger. Now that the regulars have a history together, do you think it makes Echo too provincial? I would doubt that there are 10,000 people in the world that would participate on Echo, which is OK with me. I'd like to get it on the Web, but there are things I need to do first. I can't make people go backwards. There are things we have on Echo that the Web conferencing software can't do -- like YOs [Echo's version of instant messages] or the "o" command [to see who's logged on at the same time you are]. What I try to convey in the book is that each piece is necessary. The conferences are necessary; the secret conferences are necessary; YOs are necessary; the "o" command is necessary. The variety gives it this incredible layered depth. I wouldn't want to leave any of that stuff out. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - N E X T_P A G E | Up close and personal |
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